From the Mystery Lovers Book of Quotations

Liberal principles are all very fine as long as they leave you with something to have principles about. -- Jack Higgins

Sweep everything under the rug for long enough, and you have to move right out of the house. -- Rachel Ingalls

It's hard to live a reputation down. Especially when your actions live up to it. -- Michael Z. Lewin

A prompt man is a lonely man. - Elmore Leonard

You know who casts the first stone? The guiltiest bastard in the crowd. -- William McIlvanney

Life is the process of finding out, too late, everything that should have been obvious to you at the time. -- John D. MacDonald, "The Only Girl in the Game"

We gave her everything. But it wasn't what she wanted. -- Ross MacDonald, "The Underground Man"

Sanity is sometimes a matter of going on, outwardly, as if everything is all right. -- Mary McMullen, "Prudence Be Damned"

People without brains are always dangerous. -- A.E.W. Mason, "The House of the Arrow"

Everybody needs a little improbability in their life. -- Reginal Hill, "Deadheads"

Read This

I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly, there is a tendency for the world to say to America the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out, and then to worry when America wants to sort them out. -- Tony Blair

"How about you?" asked Christopher. "Are you happy?"
"Yes. More than happy. Content."
"Perhaps that's the secret."
"Contentment?"
"Yes. Instead of asking, 'Are you happy?', perhaps what people should really ask is, 'Are you content?'"
"Isn't that like resignation? Like giving in?"
"I don't think so. I think it's about getting in touch with reality. About balancing aspirations and actuality."
--Alan Titchmarsh, "Love and Devon"

Favorite Author Quote from Martha Grimes:"It's just like family, her people. It's the kind of thing these new writers don't understand, that readers want to feel this is a family they can walk and talk amongst. Writers these days only want to write about breakups and breakdowns, everything unraveling and everybody going to the devil."

Warning: Low Blood Sugar Posting

...Let's assume that this diatribe is the work of only one irritable teacher and not schoolwide, or, God forbid, countywide, instruction. Still, it represents something. This health teacher obviously believes that delicate matters of family dynamics, as well as highly intimate subjects like sex, obedience, money and family privacy are within the purview of her course. And while she cannot take the time even to proofread her copy, she is prepared to heap scorn on parents who presume to know better than their minor children. In fact, she sounds very much like a petulant child herself, whining about having to set a good example for her younger siblings and delaying gratification.

Sure, this teacher may have had a bad day. But across the nation, public school students are being indoctrinated in "health" classes and other venues to treat their families with skepticism and to regard traditional mores as "dysfunctional." Liberals have achieved what the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci only dreamed about: They have completed "the long march through the institutions" and now control the commanding heights of the culture. Conservatives are going to have to figure out the same trick if they do not want to see the country drift irrevocably to the left.

While liberal teachers preach, conservative parents must teach their own kids to become screenwriters, journalists, professors, teachers and producers. The rallying cry of Gramsci's acolytes was "Capture the culture." Ours should be "Recapture the culture."

The nation's largest teachers' union voted to amend its resolutions Wednesday to include support for homosexual "marriage." The amendment, which met with harsh criticism from conservative family groups, passed with little resistance from delegates.

"There's a lot of blue people in red states," he said. "I'm not saying Democrats, just free-thinking and not Jesus freaks."

Does somebody want to try to explain to me why "Jesus freaks" is politically correct? Why isn't it hate speech? Okay, how about this: Does anybody think that Bill Maher's got cajones big enough to replace the name "Jesus" with the name "Mohammed (p.b.u.h)" in that sentence?

I thought not.

***

Speaking of political incorrectness, I alway chuckle at these stories. There is nothing like instant Karma, especially when it's delivered to the abuser by the abused:

PAMPLONA, Spain - A New York man suffered potentially paralyzing injuries when he was thrown by a young cow in a mock bull fight Friday at the end of the first day of Spain's famed running of the bulls.

No matter how good the U.S. economy gets, no matter how many new jobs are created, the red-hot economy still gets no respect from the media, leading The Wall Street Journal to call it the ``Rodney Dangerfield economy.''

The media have consistently downplayed the turbo-charged U.S. economy, now in its fifth year of solid economic expansion. And yet almost any other country would gladly trade its economic conditions for a U.S. economy.

In Canada, it was headline news in June that the unemployment rate fell to a 32-year low of 6.1 percent. In more than a decade, the United States has not had an unemployment rate higher than 6 percent except for five months in 2003, and our media disparagingly dismissed that period as a ``jobless recovery.''

With the same unemployment rates of about 6 percent, it's a ''jobless recovery'' according to the U.S. media, and the strongest economic expansion in more than a generation in Canada!

Another example of the media's downplaying of the U.S. economy is their neglect of the history-making news that nine states have set record-low unemployment rates so far in 2006, and an additional 15 states are within a percent of their historical low jobless rates.

***

Unlike the economy, the newspaper business is hurting all over. Here's two rules of thumb: when someone resigns from a job or declines to run for office because they "want to spend more time with their family," they are almost certainly lying. When a newspaper official, publisher or editor defends some action (almost always involving writers losing their jobs) by saying they want "stronger and more local news coverage," they are definitely lying. More evidence in this case here.

Thinking of Breeding Your Pet?

The Harp Is a Beautiful Instrument of Torture

Favorite Quotes

The self-delusion of liberalism is bottomless. It blithely celebrates the inane though no less destructive nihilism of Woodstock while treating as nihilistic traitors serious, property-holding, taxpaying citizens who protest a statist takeover of one-sixth of the United States economy. - George Neumayr

You can tell the Democrats are in trouble when a naïve hockey mom from Alaska can appear out of nowhere and wrestle the entire Democratic Party to the ground. - Christopher Chantrill

...Western hand-wringers, the great progressive liberals of the Western world, would rather wring their hands, or like Darfur, hold some ... interpretive dance event to save Darfur every week for the next thirty years. The uselessness of liberal outrage is one of the great constants of the modern world. --Mark Steyn

"America, not Europe, is now the sanctuary of culture; civilization's very existence depends upon America, upon the actuality of American life, and not the ideals of the American Dream. To criticize the actuality upon which all hope depends thus becomes a criticism of hope itself." -- Delmore Schwartz, 1958

"I've got nothing to do and I'm doing it tomorrow." --Elaine Stritch

"...He is, like all great funny men, inconsolable." --John Lahr describing a famous comedian

In taking our self-examining ethos to these extremes, we have lost a kind of wisdom, wisdom that acknowledges the complexity of human life but can move through it to find the simple truth again. While assessing the intricate failings of our moral history, many of us have lost sight of the simple truth that the system that shapes us is, in fact, a great one, that it has moved us inexorably to do better and that it's well worth defending against every aggressor and certainly against as shabby and vicious an aggressor as we face today. -- Andrew Klavan

The elites in Washington, D.C., New York City and the United Nations seem to have plotted a journey to lead America into the New World Order where a cosmopolitan global citizen is no more connected to his country than a sociopath to his fellow man. -- Dimitri Vassilaros

"Obviously if you are reading this then I have died in Iraq. I kind of predicted this, that is why I'm writing this in November. A third time just seemed like I'm pushing my chances. I don't regret going, everybody dies but few get to do it for something as important as freedom. It may seem confusing why we are in Iraq, it's not to me. I'm here helping these people, so that they can live the way we live. Not have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. To do what they want with their lives. To me that is why I died. Others have died for my freedom, now this is my mark." --Cpl. Jeffrey B. Starr, 1983-2005

Anything that doesn’t show Americans as stupid, selfish, warmongering, religious bigots, half of them living in pampered luxury in garish purpose-built Italianate mansions, the other half downtrodden in the ghetto by Halliburton stock-owning fat-cats, isn’t going to make it to the front pages or the Ten O’Clock News. --Gerard Baker

In Their Own Words: Democrats on W.M.D.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., December 1998: "Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."

Robert Einhorn, Clinton assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation, March 2002: "How close is the peril of Iraqi WMD? Today, or at most within a few months, Iraq could launch missile attacks with chemical or biological weapons against its neighbors (albeit attacks that would be ragged, inaccurate and limited in size). Within four or five years it could have the capability to threaten most of the Middle East and parts of Europe with missiles armed with nuclear weapons containing fissile material produced indigenously -- and to threaten U.S. territory with such weapons delivered by nonconventional means, such as commercial shipping containers. If it managed to get its hands on sufficient quantities of already produced fissile material, these threats could arrive much sooner."

Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, February 1998: "He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has 10 times since 1983."

...without further outside intervention, Iraq should be able to rebuild weapons and missile plants within a year [and] future military attacks may be required to diminish the arsenal again... [It's} hard to negotiate with a tyrant who has no intention of honoring his commitments and who sees nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as his country’s salvation.--New York Times Editorial Board

Kennedy: We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.
Byrd: The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical- and biological-warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.--Ted Kennedy & Robert Byrd in 2002

I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force—if necessary—to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.--John Kerry in 2002

Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.--Al Gore in 2002

We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.--Al Gore in 2002

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.--Sen. Hillary Clinton

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.--Nancy Pelosi